Recruitment - Lines of Research?
The propositions, heuristics and rules of thumb of recruitment represent business experience. The rules, processes and case histories offer a rough body of knowledge. They describe, explain and seek to predict. What do they achieve?
Research into recruitment and selection may usefully stretch across the four frameworks for the study of HRM proposed by Karen Legge
What are the "things" to be researched in each of the following areas:
- functional practice and methods
- norms, values and culture
- tensions and contradictions (a critical evaluative perspective on the functional, behavioural and normative)
- behaviour in practice - how the recruiter and the candidate construe and perform their part
Research Methods for Questions
What research methods would be suitable for investigation of the following questions?
- Do business people really rehearse the practices and comprehend what is required? Are they conscious of the pitfalls, costs and relationships involved? How clear are applicants in understanding sequences and expectations?
- How do practices vary across organisations? Do more informal practices prevail in small firms with only large, bureaucratised firms exhibiting more elaborate and prescribed systems? Do those in small firms make less effective decisions when it comes to recruiting someone - or its it a matter of horses for courses? Who are the horses? What are the courses? What are the costs?
- Selection is a social activity and - to restate a pejorative view - is given a psuedo-science edge by the very propositions which recommend that structured and tested methods systematise the process to make it more objective and reliable.
- How can the content, validity, reliability and utility of the axioms and methods be tested?.
- The methods exploit a body of knowledge taken from psychology. Are the scientific claims valid?
- Big business spends vast sums of money on the rituals of recruitment and psychometric testing of candidates. Is it well spent bringing certainty to this aspect of boundary management (recruitment across the organisation/labour market interface)?
- Is much of recruitment activity more to do with the maintenance of ritual (and preservation of the jobs of recruiters) and elaboration of the power, myth and mystique of organisational membership?
- Recruitment is a boundary management process. Chosen employees (gate-keepers) vet and test outsiders before their admittance into membership. Filtering involves data capture and exchange, technical and social tests and rituals: protocols and dances. How are applicants screened in relation to the value systems and expectations of the organisation? How far has recruitment practice really changed in an age of equal opportunity regulation.
- Recruiters persuade applicants of the benefits of membership. The discourse also persuades themselves and others about the correctness of the decisions made. What is the evidence for such discourse?
- In what ways do recruitment mechanisms reflect processes of social control (inclusion/exclusion) which maintain or modify existing organisational relationships?
Labour markets and the external environment
For those studying business phenomena, there are several externalities worthy of investigation. These are merely offered as a list.
- There is a recruitment industry which employs many devoted to offering a specialist support service to employers. The existence of recruitment agencies - private and public, open and covert also contributes to the structuring of relationships within the labour market.
- equal opportunities in employment
If data capture, analysis and discourse in recruitment seeks to justify the rightness of decisions made then an external factor in western society is the expectation that certain basic rights to equal opportunities in employment should be upheld. There is a body of anti-discrimination law (see critique of face-to-face selection interviews from a leading USA law information forum which recruiters are subject to.
- at the point of offering a job - the formation of the contract of employment needs to be understood. Recruitment and selection begin the process of contractual formation and aspects of this are determined by legal requirements
- recruitment for international posts is an important matter for multi-nationals and UK companies operating in international markets. Recruitment practices exhibit differences internationally.
- the labour market has undergone significant de-regulation. It will continue to change. Will the availability of full-time, continuous contracts continue to decline? As employment levels rise will the use of short term contracts begin to fall off as employers realise that they cannot keep their best staff? With the growth of the service sector, part-time employment has boomed. More women are employed in the service sector and thus dominate part-time employment. Will the trend for early retirement and then further employment in part-time jobs also continue.
Labour Market Trends in March 1997 showed that full-time women workers have an average hourly pay of £7 (80% of the male rate £8.75). Both earn about £5 an hour for part-time work. In addition over the previous decade, women with jobs (43% of the work force) have increased by 1.3 million.
Does down-sizing tend to give more scope to a youthful work force who are seen (by other youthful managers) to cope better in pressure-oriented, team-player jobs rather than older, family oriented people. If recruiters are youthful is there a tendency to discriminate against age (the over 45's).
What does this say about the social responsibility of employers.
- Similar questions can be put up in relation to employer responsibility in respect of providing employment opportunities for an "unskilled under-class" - those who on leaving school have never found reliable consistent employment.
- what are the implications of an organisation's recruitment function being outsourced due to down-sizing and organisational change? Retaining the services of a recruitment consultant for senior management or specialist posts is not unusual - indeed it is the norm. We use employment agencies for most groups of staff. We can thus simply ask the question, "is there any need at all for an organisation to maintain its own recruitment section.". Line managers can simply be supplied with candidates short-listed (recommended on) by agency services.
What are the disbenefits?
BOLA is developed and maintained by Chris Jarvis